It’s going to be a long, hot summer for Prince Harry as the wait goes on to find out if he has to foot a multi-million pound bill for unsuccessfully suing Associated Newspapers. After a two day hearing, the judge will take until mid-August to make his decision.
For a man who complained so loudly and publicly that he had been financially cut off by his family and who believed so passionately he had been wronged by journalists, coughing up the huge legal costs of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday would certainly hurt.
After comprehensively losing his case earlier this month, Harry did what Harry always does: he fired off a furious response claiming that the judgement had been a “complete and obvious whitewash – sadly not altogether unexpected”. He said he and his six co-claimants – including Elton John and Baroness Doreen Lawrence – had gone to court seeking justice and accountability, but “had received neither”.
These were not words likely to endear him to the judge who has been hearing the arguments about who should pay for the 11-week trial and legal proceedings which stretched over four long years. And now the Prince may have to pay a hefty price.
Harry has always been a hothead, one who refuses to adopt the Windsor stiff upper lip when things go wrong. In a way, it’s quite refreshing. When life doesn’t go his way, we certainly all hear about it. Thanks to the interview he and Meghan did with Oprah Winfrey, their Netflix series and his caustic book Spare, we know precisely what he feels about his royal existence, his family and the Palace courtiers he scathingly nicknamed The Wasp, The Fly and The Bee.
